In today's podcast I talk about the 8 key lessons I learned in 2014. Each year I do an annual recap and there are 8 that stand out to me. As a listener you have been following my running journey throughout 2014 so I use some running analogies to explain my 8 key lessons. I hope you enjoy it and wish you a very happy holiday season!
Links mentioned in today's podcast!

How do you recover from sticking your foot in your mouth?
SO...Where are the lesbians?
#46: What is coming in 2015 and answering listener questions [Podcast]
#25: LGBT Year in Review & Key Lessons in 2013 [Podcast]

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AUDIO TITLE: Episode #49 – Eight Lessons of 2014

You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy, Podcast Episode 49.

Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace.
Hello and welcome to Episode Number 49!
Well hello and welcome to episode number 49 of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace. And here we are. It is the end of December, 2014. We are about to go into a new year with lots of new things to accomplish. And today if you are listening to this as it's coming out live, it is actually coming out on Christmas Day for those of you who do celebrate Christmas. I know that I will be spending time with family. You know we celebrate Christmas but we are not an overly festive holiday-filled household, we just prefer the holiday season more generally and spending time with family and friends and collecting holiday cards from others and friends of ours. Our refrigerator right now is just completely from top to bottom filled with cards that people have sent us. So that's the kind of stuff that we enjoy around the holidays, is just getting just nice notes from people and checking in with people that we may not have talked to as much as we would have hoped throughout the year and that kind of stuff. But we do celebrate Christmas and our kids have plenty of things to look forward to on Christmas Day. But my personal excitement is a homemade apple pie that awaits me at my inlaws' house, that I'm very, very excited about. So you can see where my primary focus is, I'm focused on food and what greatness awaits.

So yeah, I don't know what is in store for you today if you are maybe you're listening to this while you're travelling somewhere, or if you're listening to this it could be June 2015 by the time you're listening to this, and that's totally cool too.
Today I have an unedited show for you..
So because I am recording this just a couple of days before the airing date, I do not have time to make this a very nicely edited show. So you are getting a very raw version of the show today, so if I mess up along the way there will be no editing this or cutting it out. So I've had a couple of episodes in the past where I did kind of a Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Unplugged version where I wasn't doing a whole lot of editing, and to be honest I feel like you probably won't even be able to tell the difference unless of course we're two and a half minutes in now and I do something egregious in the next few minutes; which, there we go, is quite possible.
Today's topic..
Anywho. So today's topic is I want to just talk about some of the things, some of the key lessons that I've learned in 2014,

Today's podcast addresses specifically how to be an ally to a community you are not necessarily a part of. I train LGBT allies on a daily basis and successfully I might add. ;-) But I had an epiphany recently. How does one enter the world of being an ally where they don't know where to start? I talk about this as it relates to LGBT allies but it wasn't until recent where I've been struggling to find my way as an ally to the black community that it truly hit me with how intimidating and daunting this can be. Allies are critical to any group of people and the concepts are universal. In this episode you'll hear my struggles of what an ally means to me and how I am trying to be a better ally to a community that I am not a part of - and how you can be too! Enjoy listening and as always, I would truly love to hear your thoughts on this.
Links mentioned in today's podcast:

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AUDIO TITLE: Episode #48 – How to Be an Ally to a Community You Don’t Belong To

You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, Episode 48.
Welcome!
Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace.
What's on the agenda for today..
Well hello and welcome to Episode Number 48 of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and we are in December 2014 and I just want to say Happy Holidays to those of you celebrating holidays during this lovely time of year. And I have a- I almost feel like I might end up just going completely rogue from what I had planned for today's episode airing on December 11, 2014. I have a whole list of things that ideally I would like to cover in today's episode but there's just a couple of things that are on my mind that are weighing me down significantly and I feel like I have a trusting audience, and I feel like it might not be a bad idea to share with you a couple of those things. So I will end up I think, covering a couple of the things that I wanted to actually cover in today's episode, I have some information on a recent article that went out about my business, I have some updates on book number three that I've been kind of been teasing in my social media. I wanted to touch base on the CEI, which is the Corporate Equality Index put out by the Human Rights Campaign, and in that I wanted to update you specifically on Barilla Pasta. If you recall I did an episode awhile ago which I will include in today's show notes, that you can go back and take a listen to, and I've also talked about Barilla on webinars of mine in the past about what PR tragedy they had in September of 2013 and I have some interesting updates on their progress, which is kind of interesting. And then I wanted to share a touching note that I received from someone who is just kind of following my stuff, and it's kind of one of those warm and friendly types of things.
#blacklivesmatter..
So that was basically what I had on my agenda to talk with you today, and while it might seem like a long, lengthy list, they all kind of ducktail into one another so it's not really that bad. However I do feel the need to go rogue and address what is happening in present day, December 2014,

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Today I'm pleased to share episode #47 of the podcast. In this episode I discuss what I am thankful for this year as well as tackling a listener question about the usage of the word Queer. It's an interesting topic and one you should know about as you embark on your LGBT marketing endeavors! Check it out and enjoy your holiday.

Links mentioned in today's podcast!

Episode 23 - What I am Thankful for in 2013 Huffington's Post: The Salvation Army's History of Anti-LGBT Discrimination Jennifer Brown Consulting Queer: What does it mean? What do the Great Depression and the LGBT equality have in common? The hidden implications of LGBT terms and why you may want to avoid them

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AUDIO TITLE: Episode #47 – A Queer Question

You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, Episode 47. Welcome... Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace.

Well hello and welcome to episode number 47 of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and first I would like to say Happy Thanksgiving. So Happy Thanksgiving to all of my US listeners, to my Canadian friends I apologize I know your Thanksgiving was on October 12, so I'm a little bit belated in saying Happy Thanksgiving to you as well. But I hope that you are enjoying your day today and spending time with friends, family, et cetera and hopefully- hopefully not at work however I'm sure there are many of you out there who are working today, myself included. Fortunately I have the benefit of working from home so I don't have to be dealing with any type of retail chaos or craziness that ensues during this beloved consumer driven time of the year. But anyway I do hope that the last year is something that you can look back on and think of all the many reasons why you're thankful and grateful and all that great stuff. Things to be thankful for... In today's podcast I want to just talk about a couple of things. I do want to mention just a couple of reasons why I'm thankful, because I did that in an episode I did last year, which was episode number 23, but this year I don't want to make that the focus of that podcast, I do want to mention a couple of things. But today I want to talk about two things in particular. The first of those two is talking about your options as a consumer, whether you're LGBT or not, and donating to places. So donating to food shelters, pantries, et cetera. I just want to talk about a couple of things as it relates to that as we're in the spirit of the holidays and it's now Thanksgiving. ...And the word 'queer.' And then the other thing which is completely unrelated to Thanksgiving is that I want to talk about the word 'queer.' And this is something that I should have been talking about more; I've written a couple of blog posts on it, it's something that I bring up in almost every webinar that I do, but I haven't actually dedicated any real significant piece of content to the word 'queer.' It does stem from an email that I received from somebody working in corporate America. So I want to read her email, my response to her, and then I want to elaborate on it a little bit. Just because it is a topic and word that comes up on a fairly regular basis including the webinar that ...

Hi there podcast listener! Thank you for being here. I am delighted to share with you my plans for this podcast as I enter year 3 of doing so. I also discuss ways in which I will be improving my blog and products going forward as we enter 2015. This is the first podcast of many where I am including a full transcription of the podcast, which you can read below.
Links included in today's podcast:

Three (3) years in: What new content will you get to improve your LGBT efforts?

#024: Expert Interview with Candice Czubernat [Podcast]

My first book - updated!

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Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace.

Welcome to podcast episode #46!
Well hello and welcome to Episode #46 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today I am going to share with you a couple of things that may be seemingly random but we're going to just talk about a couple of things and this episode is probably going to be a little bit shorter than most. So I have three things. So the first is that I want to share a little bit about the half marathon that I completed this past weekend. I've been sharing details of this journey with you since I decided to do it, probably I think it was over a year ago and I'm pretty certain I started talking about it on the podcast from the get-go, so I just wanted to give you a quick update on that. I want to share with you information about what's to come on the blog and the podcast going forward, because November marks - this will be going into my third year of blogging and podcasting - and going into the third year I'm making some changes that I want you to be aware of. And then I have four questions that somebody who attended my webinar last month in October, she had asked me these via email and I have been telling her for quite some time that I'm going to respond to them and I just don't have the time to type up a written response that I feel like it really deserves; so I decided that I will answer her questions on the air because I think there's something in here that you can learn from as well. So I'm hoping that by my answering her questions there's something as value for you as well. So that's pretty much my agenda for today, like I said chances are this is going to be a shorter episode than usual and I feel like that is completely okay.

First things first... my half marathon update
So I said the first thing, I just want to share with you that I have finally completed the - I almost said damn but I shouldn't say damn because it was a good thing. So I have finally completed the half marathon that I set out to complete in August, 2013 is when I first came up with the idea while out with a friend over drinks at the beach, we decided, "Hey, let's run a half marathon," neither of us being runners mind you. And we set out to do the Disney Wine and Dine Half Marathon which was this past weekend which was November 8th and 9th I believe the dates were. November 8th is what my medal says sitting next to me right to my left. And it was quite, quite the process. So I feel like the reason why I like talking about it on the podcast, I think there's just so many similarities between running when you have a goal and then just running your business. I know I've said this before in speaking engagements that I've done recently,

I am so pleased to present you with today's podcast interview with Amy Mayes of Amy Mayes Photography. She is a brilliant photographer and an LGBT Rights Activist. She shares many great insights on being an ally to the LGBT community and what that means to her and her business.

You are bound to learn a thing or two from today's show. As always, feel free to reach out with questions or comments - I'd love to hear from you!
Links mentioned in this episode:

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AUDIO TITLE: Episode #45 - Interview with Amy Mayes Photography
Jenn T Grace:
You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, episode 45.
Intro:
Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace.
Jenn T Grace:
Well hello and welcome to episode number 45 of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today is October 30th, and I am really delighted to be bringing you an interview today that I wasn't planning on bringing to you for a couple of months now, but I have a great interview to share with you today with Amy Mayes of Amy Mayes Photography. She is a New York based- or New York City based photographer who is an ally to the LGBT community, who is also an LGBT rights activist. And I absolutely loved the conversation that she and I had, and I'm really excited to be sharing it with you. And what makes this conversation even more cool and fun in my opinion is the fact that Amy is a follower of the podcast, so it was kind of- it was interesting to kind of have the tables turned. So instead of listening to the podcast at the gym, the next time she's at the gym listening to it, she'll be listening to the podcast with herself. So I think that's pretty cool, so I am super excited about sharing the interview with you, she's just got some great, great insights as it relates to LGBT and being an ally, and how to really use that as an opportunity within your business.

So I'm excited about that, but as always before we get into the interview, I do want to just mention a couple of things. And today I'm going to be more brief than usual, and I know that that's somewhat probably famous last words at this point. But I want to mention three things. So the first of the three is on a personal note, that as you're listening to this, if you're listening to it when it actually airs on October 30th of 2014, by the time we speak on the next podcast which will be in the middle of November, I will finally have had completed the half marathon that I have been talking about with you guys for quite some time now. I have been- I've really been sharing my journey with you since I decided to do this over a year ago, and the day is finally coming. So in about a week I will be running the Disney Wine and Dine Half Marathon in Orlando, Florida, and I'm super excited about it. I finally did my first training run of that full distance not last weekend, but the weekend before, so I made the full 13.1 miles, still standing when I reached the end of it, and I did it in two hours and 39 minutes, and 29 seconds. So my goal has been to do it in 2:55 or less, so I already beat my goal. So I am super, super excited. So I will certainly be updating you with information as i...

I had a chance to recently sit down with Re Perez of BRANDING FOR THE PEOPLE. I've known of Re for a couple of years through our mutual relationship with the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. At this past conference I brought home some of his marketing materials and promptly reached out to see if he would be a guest on the show and he agreed.

It was great talking to a brand strategist. I think you will learn a lot of general branding and marketing information from this episode in addition to many valuable tips for effectively marketing to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.

Happy listening!

Here are some links derived directly from today's episode:

BRANDING FOR THE PEOPLE.
Also, check out when the next webinar is here.
My book: No, wait… You do look gay! The 7 Mistakes Preventing You from Selling to the $830 Billion LGBT Market.

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AUDIO TITLE: Episode #44 – An Interview with Re Perez
Jenn T Grace:
You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, Episode 44.
Intro:
Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace.
Jenn T Grace:
Well hello and welcome to episode number 44 of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace. I am delighted to be talking with you today as I always am. We are in the middle of October right now and it's starting to really get a little bit crisp around these parts up here in New England. I absolutely love it. I love the fall, I'm excited about it, and I just figured I would share that with you. I just got back in from an early morning run, and it was just gorgeous, and the leaves crunching under your feet which can also be equally as gorgeous as they can be a hazard to not falling on the ground which I did not do but I feel like it's in the back of my mind that I am waiting for it to happen one of these mornings. But it is what it is.

I want to just talk about a couple of things before I get into today's episode which is in interview with Re Perez of Branding for the People. And I had just an awesome conversation with Re and we talked about his role as a Chief Brand Strategist as well as the CEO and Founder of Branding for the People. Which is an NGLCC certified LGBT-owned business. And he just shares so much good information about how he came to starting his business, what those 'ah-ha' moments looked like that made him want to start it and kind of guide him in that path of doing so. And then because he is a personal branding expert, we really got to talk about some really interesting things that I think are going to help you be a more effective marketer, or either an effective LGBT person marketing to other LGBT people, or a more effective ally. So I'm really excited about that, so I'm looking forward to getting your thoughts on this. So we will get into the interview in just a moment.

Of course we do you know I always like to make a couple of announcements. And today's announcement- so today is, as this is being released, it is October 16th, and I am just a couple of weeks away from running my half marathon. And I am feeling quite confident at this point which has been kind of touch and go throughout; whether or not- you know some days I was like, "Oh I don't think I can do this," other days I'm like, "I've got it.

Today's episode was so much fun. I had a chance to sit down and speak with Colin Sines who wears many hats, all of which come back to LGBT marketing specifically in the area of travel and tourism. Colin and I met last year at the Travel Gay Canada Conference, which is coming up at the end of this month on October 23 and 24. More details on the conference here. It is very clear that he is an expert in all things LGBT marketing and the go-to person in Canada for those seeking these niche opportunities. He shares very personal insights of how he began in this field and also shares wonderful advice on how to get yourself started on this path. If you like what you hear, please leave a comment or share with a friend.

Here are some links shared in today’s episode:

OUTVisions LGBT Magazine for Professionals
Travel Gay Canada
Check out when the next webinar is here.
My book: No, wait… You do look gay! The 7 Mistakes Preventing You from Selling to the $830 Billion LGBT Market.

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AUDIO TITLE: Episode #43 – LGBT Travel and Tourism Expert Colin Sines
Jenn T Grace:
You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, Episode 43.
Intro:
Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace.
Jenn T. Grace:
Hello and welcome to episode number 43 of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Jenn T. Grace. And today's episode is going to be an interview, and that interview is with Colin Sines who is the President of Travel Gay Canada. He is also the founder, I believe, and publisher of Out Visions which is a magazine, and he'll give you some information about both of those organizations as we go through the interview itself today. However, I do want to mention that Colin is the absolute expert on LGBT marketing, especially as it relates to travel and tourism. So it was a complete pleasure to have been able to have this conversation with Colin and record it for the benefit of you, my loyal listener.

So I met Colin last year at the Travel Gay Canada conference which was last October. And the conference itself was fantastic and I had the pleasure of presenting, and it's actually- for those of you who have read my book, it's actually where I came up with the concept of the Seven Deadly Sins, which I've now renamed to the Seven Mistakes Preventing You from Selling to the $830 Billion LGBT Market. So the Seven Deadly Sins were really debuted from a presentation that I was doing for them last year. It was something that I was kind of working on, but it was really the first time that I kind of threw them out in that particular order and format, and I got some really great feedback from a lot of those who were in that session. So I certainly kept on moving along in the direction of honing in on those Seven Deadly Sins, and now that is actually comprising the second half of my new book. So I just wanted to point that out because I think it's pretty cool. This year, unfortunately, I am not able to be in attendance at the conference. October and November and a little bit of December actually seem to be really, really busy, heavy conference times. I don't know- maybe it's just because Spring and Fall tend to be really heavy times when people have conference, but I had to make the choice between two different event,

Hello and welcome to episode #42 of the Gay Business & Marketing Made Easy podcast I am your host Jenn Grace.

As always I thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to listen to this show. I really appreciate it.

Today's show is an interview with Dr. Ronni Sanlo who has an incredible past as it relates to LGBT history. She's been in the movement for a really long time and has been doing incredible work. She shares two stories during our conversation that are so moving that I had chills. I would consider her to be a true pioneer in LGBT rights. And because of that she has some really interesting thoughts around how to market to the LGBT community.

During the interview today one of my announcements was asking you to send your pictures of you reading my new book! :)
Here are some links mentioned in today's episode:

Purple Distinctions
Facebook.com/RonniSanlo
RonniSanlo@gmail.com

Listen to the podcast by clicking the play button below!

Thanks for listening today, I hope you enjoyed and found value in this episode!
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AUDIO TITLE: Episode #42 – Ronni Sanlo Interview
Intro:
Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace.
Jenn T Grace:
Hello and welcome to episode number 42 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn- with two N's- Grace. And as always I thank you so much for taking the time out of your day today to listen to today's show. I have a great guest coming up and I'm super excited to have her on. And one of the random things that I want to ask you right out of the gate, and I think by now you probably actually associate me with random because I do throw a random thing here and there for you. And I think you may know this, but I am a total podcast junkie. So I listen to, it's probably about eight different podcasts right now, and I find value in all of them for very different reasons. And whether I'm in the car by myself I'll be listening to them, if I'm out running I'm listening to them. Even sometimes if I'm just kind of in transit going from store to car or anything like that, I'm usually listening to a podcast. So I have found over the last couple of weeks that I have very specific podcasts that I listen to for a very specific timeframes. So if I am going to be in the car and I know it's going to be a quick thirty minute drive, I have a thirty minute episode I listen to. And then also if I'm going to go out for a run, I know that I need one that's usually about 45 to 60 minutes.

So what I want to know from you, is when and where are you listening to this show? I would love to hear it. I know from, actually a great deal of you, that a lot of you listen to it on your way into work in the morning. So I'm curious to know what your commute length is like, or if you're going to the gym and listening to this, what that might be like too. I'm really just a curious person in general, but what I would love to do is to find out when you guys are listening to them, and what your ideal episode length would actually be like. Because I do have episodes that range from thirty to sixty minutes, and I know there's other podcasts out there that are far more routine with the length of their episodes. So I'm just curious to know when you're listening to it. Because if there's a way that I can make it easier for you, I would love to do that. So like I said,

I had the great pleasure of talking with Jeff Berger on today's podcast. Jeff is the founder of the National Association of Gay & Lesbian Real Estate Professionals (NAGLREP) and shared some great insights on more effective marketing to the LGBT community.

If you are interested in attending the conference he has given you, the listener, a code for $100 off. Just use 'fortlauderdale' when you check out and you'll automatically save $100! You can't go wrong with that. ;)

NAGLREP@gmail.com

561-865-6117

As always - check out when the next webinar is here.

Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the podcast? No problem! Read the transcript below.

AUDIO START: [0:00:00]

Jenn T Grace: You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, Episode 41.

Intro: Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace.

Jenn T Grace: Well hello and welcome to episode number 41 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn T. Grace. And today I have an interview with Jeff Berger, who is the founder of the National Association of Gay and Lesbian Real Estate Professionals. And we had a wonderful conversation that I'm going to let you all have a great listen to, and he had just a couple of really great tidbits, and- because conversation was just fantastic in general, but he made a comment about not being able to just take a hitchhike on the LGBT market. And that was the first time I've heard it phrased like that, but I highly encourage you to stick around and listen to the remainder of the episode so you can hear exactly what he was talking about and in what context.

But as always before we get into today's interview, I just want to run down a couple of really super quick announcements; and I know a lot of times I say super quick and then they're not really. But today, they will be. So the first thing that I want to mention is that in the last podcast, was episode forty, and that podcast was a really short episode, and the point of it was to ask you to help me get to number one on the Amazon Best Seller list. So I put out a plea to you, I put out blog posts, I was all over the place in terms of trying to get assistance in reaching my goal. I unfortunately did not make it to the number one slot, however I did reach number seven, which I'm really, really excited about. And I reached top ten status in three different categories. So I ended up hitting it in the consumer behavior category, the business etiquette category, and the sales and selling category. So it was a calculated risk of putting my book in the mainstream marketing categories that have a lot more competition than the smaller LGBT category. But ultimately I think the risk was way, way worth it because I sold a lot of books, many more than I was expecting to sell which is amazing. And I made it to number seven which is my lowest number, and then I had the other couple of categories that were all top ten. So I'm really excited by that outcome, and I'm very, very grateful for all of your support and assistance as we went through this together.

I am also very much delighted that this is the first week that my children have gone back to school.

This week's podcast is all about my virtual book launch. A much shorter episode than usual, that is filled with so much love and gratitude to you the listener and reader. I really appreciate you! :)

Now through Friday is the virtual launch of my new book, No, wait… You do look gay! The 7 Mistakes Preventing You from Selling to the $830 Billion LGBT Market. (www.nowaityoudolookgay.com) It is a really unique book packed with marketing and sales advice to any business owner or professional looking to reach the widely untapped LGBT market. My goal is that this book becomes an Amazon Best Seller during this time frame.

At the time of writing this podcast post, it is sitting at #7! Can we get to #1, together??I could use your help so that I actually have a shot at achieving this goal. Would you be willing to share posts on your social media between August 21-22? As an incentive to purchase during the virtual launch, I am offering a super low Kindle price ($5.99) during those 4 days and I am giving purchasers free access to my online training course 'Defining Your LGBT Target Market' (normally $97) completely free.

There is something beautiful about having just bumped into the first page! None of this would be happening if it weren't for this incredibly supportive network of friends and colleagues - thank you all from the bottom of my heart, I really appreciate you!

Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below.
AUDIO TITLE: Jenn T Grace – Ep 40
Jenn T. Grace:
You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, Episode 40.
Intro:
Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace.
Jenn T. Grace:
Well hello and welcome to episode number forty of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today is going to be an extra brief episode because I am in the middle of launching my second book, 'No Wait, You Do Look Gay: The Seven Mistakes Preventing You From Selling to the $830 billion LGBT Market.' And I have been talking about the book launch for a while, but today is the day. Actually this past week has been the week. So on Monday I began reaching out to folks in my network asking them if they would be willing to post something on social media, whether it's on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, maybe send something to their audience in an email, newsletter, whatever it happens to be. And I personally have the goal, and the goal still stands because the launch is from August 19th through the 22nd, and today is August 20th, and the goal is to make it to number one in the Business and Money category on Amazon in the Etiquette section. So I have picked a really broad topic, or a broad category, trying to rank in on Amazon. And right now as it stands of this recording, I am in the number nine slot. So I have made it to the top ten bestselling list on Amazon, and I can't even being to explain how super excited I am at the moment. Right before I was about to hit record on this podcast I happened to do a refresh, and I went from number fourteen up to number nine. So my goal is still really strong of trying to get to number one. When I first started this out I had no idea if it would be even remotely attainable, but now looking, sitting here in the number nine slot, I feel like it's possible. I just have a lot of hope, it's possible. I just want to say thank you to those of you who are listening who have participated in the sharing of this information. It is amazing,

Where's the Beef in Burger King's 'Proud Whopper' Campaign?
How Burger King Recently Brought Out The Intolerance Of Facebook Christians (Video)
Three (3) critical mistakes you don't want to say in a crowd of LGBT people...

Listen to the episode by clicking the play button below.

One of the plenary sessions featured a prominent business man who was amazing and brilliant in his business advice and acumen! However, during his speech he hit three (of the many) critical mistakes in mis-communicating with the LGBT community. When he said them I cringed a little on his behalf. He was so passionate, so genuine and so authentic with his care for the community, but he wasn’t armed with the right way to effectively communicate.

All three things he said have been the subject of previous blog posts or material in my new book. What was so fascinating is that I had many people come up to me and say ‘hey, can you believe he said that?’ or ‘I’ve read that on your blog before.’ My response to all of the conversations I had were ‘I’ve addressed this topic on my blog and/or book, I’m so happy you are reading my materials. Ultimately he seems like a genuine man so we should give him the benefit that he just doesn’t know the right language to use.’ Everyone I said this to, had a collective, ‘yeah, that makes sense’ kind of response. It was great to have people come up to me and say they took notice, but also that people were understanding of his faux pas.

Now you may be curious as to the three faux pas. Drumroll please…
He referred to the LGBT community as having a ‘lifestyle’ – read more on this topic here.
He referred to being LGBT as a ‘preference’ – read more on this topic here.
He used the phrase ‘Those people have style’ – read more on this topic here.
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AUDIO TITLE: Episode #39 – NGLCC Recap and Burger King Case Study
Jenn T Grace:
You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, Episode 39.
Intro:
Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace
Jenn T Grace:
Hello and welcome episode number 39 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn T. Grace. And today I have a couple of things that I want to talk to you about. And then I want to talk about two specific topics, and those are my experience just recently at the NGLCC conference which is the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. And I've been talking about their annual conference for a couple of episodes, and certainly I've interviewed many people who have ties to the NGLCC in past episodes. So I know I’ve been encouraging a lot of you to attend this year, and what's great is that I'm actually shocked and almost at a loss of words how many of you I was able to meet for the first time this year who came because you are listeners of this podcast. So I am beyond excited with that type of success. So I'm really fortunate to have met a lot of you, so I want to talk about the conference experience and then a couple of faux pas that unravelled right before my eyes which are so worth talking about here.

So that's going to be one, and then two, while this is somewhat probably about a month overdue at this point, I do want to talk about the ad campaign that Burger King did for Pride, and there was one hell of a kerfuffle that occurred from it towards the- I would...

In this new podcast, I had the pleasure of interviewing a close friend and colleague on the show. I lovingly refer to her as an operational genius, but you can just call her Stacy (Morataya-Pilkington). This interview covers many topics and her retail experience as an LGBT shopper will teach you a thing or two about how to effectively market to the community. Don't miss this episode!
Below are the items mentioned in this episode of the podcast.

Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below.
AUDIO TITLE: Episode #38 - Stacy Morataya-Pilkington
Intro:
Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace.
Jenn T. Grace:
Hello and welcome to episode number 38 of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today I am absolutely delighted to bring you an interview that I did with a very dear close friend of mine, Stacy Morataya-Pilkington, and she is the Director of Hotel Operations for Foxwoods Resort Casino which is based here in southeastern Connecticut. And she and I have been friends for several years now, and she's very near and dear to me, and she also happens to be the President of the greater Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce in which I am the Vice President of. So it was really awesome to be able to sit down with her in a more formal capacity and just kind of pick her brain, and ask her some questions about her life's story, and what's brought her from Las Vegas out here to Connecticut, and then just really talk about what it means to be an advocate in the workplace. We talked about how to be effective in your LGBT marketing outreach, that there are a couple of things that you need to do such as be authentic; which I think by now you know that I preach a great deal about. But then also to be vulnerable and ask questions. So today's episode is going to be fantastic. She had just tons of inspirational advice, and she's just great, I'm certain that you will enjoy today's interview.

However before we hop over to the interview, I just want to make a couple of announcements just because it is indeed July 24th and the launch of my new book, 'No Wait, You do Look Gay: The Seven Mistakes Preventing You from Selling to the LGBT Market,' is just days away from launching. So if you are listening to this, and you are listening to it live, hooray, I love you, you're awesome. I encourage you to head over to www.NoWaitYouDoLookGay.com and check things out. And if you happen to be listening to this in the very, very distant future, maybe it's a year from now, maybe it's two, three years away, if you go to that same link, www.NoWaitYouDoLookGay.com it will be redirecting you over to Amazon where you can purchase the printed copy, the audio copy, or the Kindle version, or some sort of mobile version. I'm really excited about the book coming live. We kind of talk about it a little bit in the interview towards the end because while it may seem like I paid Stacy to talk about some of the things that she talked about, I did not actually do that. Although now that I think of it, it's probably not a bad idea to pay my guests to do some plugging. But I would never do that because I love you guys, and I preach about authenticity, and transparency,

In this podcast I proudly discuss my newest project, which is my 2nd book. I give insider info on the book and share how you can buy books in bulk and get some amazing bonuses! Listen to learn more!

Play the episode by clicking below. Or subscribe to the free podcast in iTunes today!

New Book: "No Wait, You Do Look Gay: 7 Mistakes Preventing You From Selling to the $830 Billion LGBT Market"

Did you check out the first book, "But you don't look gay..."

Want a Free Book? Send me a message at blog@jenntgrace.com with Subject: Book Review

Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below.

AUDIO TITLE: Episode #37 – Seven Mistakes Preventing You from Selling

Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace
Hello and welcome!
Well hello and welcome to Episode Number 37 of the podcast, I am your host Jenn Grace, and here we are today in July. If you are a long time listener of this show, hopefully you went through one of the 30 interviews that was in the month of June. I recorded those interviews back in 2013 but in order to celebrate Pride again I figured I'd bring them back out and have you listen to them all over again in 2014. I hope you enjoyed them. I can tell based on my statistics of my podcast listeners that you certainly were enjoying them so I'm pretty excited about that. I'm really excited to share that I have surpassed 5,000 downloads which is pretty exciting, I've been on the air since January of 2013, so I'm going on a little over a year and a half now and I'm quite pleased with the listeners that I have so I really thank you so much for tuning into my show every other week.

In today's episode I want to cover a handful of things and the meat of the show is going to be around when I am talking about my book. The new book is launching in the month of July, 2014 and if you recall, or maybe you don't recall, but I launched a print book last July as well. I was actually trying to hit the same exact publication date for 2014 as I did in 2013 and I'm just a little bit shy, just a couple of days shy of that. So at any rate I'm really excited about the new book and I want to give you a little bit of a sneak peek into it and talk about what type of special offers I have and all that kind of fun stuff. Really kind of going into what you can expect from this book. So I'm excited to share that with you. And there's just a handful of things that I kind of want to talk about. I guess this episode is more of- I guess you could say me rambling about just stuff that's going on in my business and people that I've been interacting with as of late. So if you are looking for an episode that has some very specific meaty type of content to it, where I'm talking about a very specific topic or I'm doing an interview, you may want to consider just kind of skipping through this one, pretending it didn't exist; but I can assure you that the next episode that comes out I will have a guest on. So feel free to just kind of mosey past this one if you'd like and I can check you out in episode 38 which will be in just a couple of weeks.
Check out my new website!
So for those of you still listening who would like to hear me ramble about all the random things that are happening in my business right now, I want to share with you first and foremost how incredibly excited I am about my new website. If you haven't been to my website recently,